Snowbound in Sweetwater Ranch
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RaeAnne Thayne
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15,1K
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CHAPTER ONE
“We shouldn’t go. It’s not right to leave you here alone. Not with a storm coming on.”
Margie Taylor’s sturdy features creased with worry, and her weathered, capable hand fretted with the handle of her suitcase. With his typical stoicism, her husband, Clint, took it from her and stowed it behind the seat in their king-cab Ford pickup.
Katie Crosby managed a patient smile, just as if she and Margie hadn’t just spent the last three hours circling this same argument more times than a green-broke horse at the end of a lead line. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “I’ll be just fine. I can take care of myself for a few days and you said you’d made arrangements for Darwin Simmons to come over from the Bar S to feed and water the stock. I don’t foresee any problems.”
“Still, I don’t feel good about leaving you. You know we always try to be here when one of the family comes to Sweetwater.”
“I know how seriously you and Clint take your responsibilities as caretakers of the ranch. You do a wonderful job here but you are certainly entitled to a private life, too.”
Margie looked unconvinced and Katie squeezed her hand. “Your daughter needs you. It’s her first baby and she’s probably scared to death and needs her mother.”
The bitter irony of her words didn’t escape her, but Katie ignored the sudden pang in her chest. “You have to go to Idaho Falls,” she went on. “I would feel just horrible if you missed seeing your new grandchild enter the world because of me.”
“Weatherman says that storm is supposed to be a real doozy,” Clint spoke up.
“Then you’d better hurry and get on your way so you aren’t caught in it. I’ll be fine, I promise.”
“But what if you’re stranded out here by yourself?” Margie asked, her forehead furrowed with worry.
“I won’t mind, I promise. I came out from Portland looking for a little peace and quiet. I have plenty of books to read and the kitchen is fully stocked. I don’t need anything else. As long as Darwin can take care of the stock, I’ll be cozy and warm and snug as can be in the ranch house.”
“I just don’t feel right about this.”
“Don’t give me another thought. Just focus on Carly and that new grandbaby of yours.”
Between her and Clint, they finally managed to herd Margie into the passenger seat of the truck, though she still looked worried.
Before they drove away, Clint rolled down the window. “If the power goes out, you’ll have to start up the generator,” he said gruffly. “Instructions are on the wall next to it.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said for what seemed like the hundredth time. Through the open window she kissed him on the cheek, enjoying his blush. “Give the little darling a kiss for me, all right? Be safe.”
He finally put the truck in gear and the four-wheel drive tires spit gravel as he headed down the long drive. Katie stood and watched them go while an unusually harsh wind for early March dug icy knuckles into her ribs inside her open canvas ranch coat. Despite her fleece hat, her head was freezing.
She should be used to this half-naked feeling after nearly three months without the heavy mane of hair she had always worn, but she still felt exposed with her new short, wispy hairstyle.
A few fluttery snowflakes settled on her skin and the canvas of her coat with deceptive gentleness. They might look lovely now, tiny swirling specks against the pale lavender twilight, but she knew a Wyoming winter storm could turn deadly with warp speed, even in March.
She had a feeling the weatherman was right about the storm. The air had a heavy, expectant quality to it, and thick dark clouds already concealed the tops of the mountains.
Katie filled her lungs with cold air that smelled of snow and lifted her face to the gossamer flakes.
She had always found peace out here and usually loved the view from the sprawling log-and-stone ranch house with its wide front porch and four gables along the steeply pitched roof. Even in winter, she could gaze for hours at the harsh and wild ring of snow-covered mountains that loomed over the ranch, the neat split-rail fences on either side of the driveway, the long row of bushy pine trees that formed a barrier from the endless Wyoming wind.
Try as she might, she knew she would find little comfort in the view this time. She was afraid peace would become a rare and elusive commodity in the coming months.
With a deep sigh, she reached a hand inside her coat and touched the tiny, barely noticeable bulge at her abdomen.
Just when, exactly, does a woman decide her life has spun completely and irrevocably out of her control? she wondered grimly.
Katie liked to think she was a fairly together kind of person. Sure, she had her problems. Who didn’t? So what if her best friend Carrie compared her to a hermit crab with agoraphobia and her mother still thought she was a fat, homely thirteen-year-old with bad vision and a serious addiction to comfort food?
She might lack the grace and poise one might expect from an offspring of one of the Northwest’s wealthiest families. But besides thick, gooey macaroni and cheese, Katie had always comforted herself with the immutable knowledge that she had something far more important than charm and beauty and a twenty-inch waist.
She was smart. Off-the-charts smart. She wasn’t arrogant about it—it was just a fact of life, like her brown eyes, her streaky brown hair, the tiny heart-shaped mole just above her left eyebrow.
She might not have grace and poise, but she had graduated summa cum laude from Stanford and become the vice president of research and development of one of the most powerful computer companies in the world. She knew her brother Trent relied on her logic and judgment at Crosby Systems and used her often as a sounding board.
So how, she wondered now as she gazed at the charcoal clouds gathering force, did she find herself in this predicament? Pregnant and alone and deep in the grip of a major panic attack?
Two days ago when her OB had confirmed the suspicion she hadn’t even dared admit to herself, that panic had virtually paralyzed her. She had told herself the queasiness that had plagued her for several weeks must be some kind of lingering bug, had attributed her missed periods to stress and fatigue.
Hoping she only needed time away from the high stress of her life, she had come to the ranch, her own personal refuge, to recharge her batteries. After several weeks of telecommuting, the fatigue and the nausea hadn’t abated. She returned to Portland for a meeting she couldn’t miss and finally decided to see her doctor, who delivered the stunning news.
She had somehow driven in a numb haze to her condo and had sat in her living room all night long with the curtains drawn and the lights off.
The next morning she could think of nothing but returning to this haven where she had always felt such safety and solace. Maybe the clean mountain air would help her figure out how to cope with the atomic bomb that had just detonated in her neatly ordered life.
In the last few days, she’d had more time to get used to the idea that she was going to be a mother in a little over six months but she still didn’t have the first idea how to chart out the rest of her life. She had always been one for blueprints and goals and lists, even as a little girl. So how was she supposed to pencil in an unplanned pregnancy at age twenty-eight, especially when her child’s father didn’t even know her real name?
She meant what she said to Margie. She was almost glad they had planned to leave for the birth of their new grandchild. As much as she loved the ranch caretakers, they tended to hover over her. Right now she desperately needed solitude—time to ponder and meditate and somehow shape an entirely new life plan for herself, one that included the tiny baby growing inside her.
One that certainly didn’t include the child’s father, no matter how much she might wish things could be different.
Kate shook off the foolish thought. A smart woman could never believe she and her baby’s father would ever have more than the one incredible night they had shared.
* * *
An hour later she had just added another log to the fire in the massive river-rock fireplace of the great room and was settling onto the comfy couch with a mug of hot cocoa and a book she knew she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on when she heard the bass rumble of a vehicle approaching.
What had Margie and Clint forgotten? she wondered. At this rate, they would find themselves stuck out here in the middle of the approaching blizzard.
A blast of cold air hit her as soon as she hurried to open the door for them. She shivered and saw that in the short time since she had stood in the driveway watching them leave, a half-inch of snow had fallen. The sun had slid behind the mountains and in the pale lavender twilight, she could make out a late-model SUV approaching the house.
Not Clint and Margie, then. Odd. They hadn’t mentioned they were expecting anyone.
From the entryway, she watched a man climb out of the vehicle and had an impression of lean, muscular strength. She saw only dark wavy hair and a leather aviator jacket, then he turned to face her and the stoneware mug slipped from her clumsy fingers.
She reached for it just in time to keep the whole thing from gushing out all over the wood floor. Hot cocoa splashed her jeans but she barely registered it. She could focus on only one horrifying realization.
He had found her!
She couldn’t seem to draw enough breath into her lungs as Peter Logan slammed the door to the SUV and stalked up the porch stairs. The blood rushed away from her oxygen-starved brain and she swayed, fighting a panicked urge to slam the door and shove the heavy hall table across it as a barricade against his anger. It took every ounce of concentration to keep her hands clenched tightly at her sides, not covering the tiny, barely there life growing inside her.
“Hello, Celeste.” Her middle name came out more like a snarl.
Celeste. The name she’d used the night of the auction gala, when she’d kept her true identity a secret from him.
“Peter. Th-this is a surprise.” She hated the stammer but couldn’t seem to help it.
“I’ll just bet it is.”
She couldn’t think what to say, could only stare at him as wild memories crowded through her mind of how that tight, angry mouth had once been tender and sensual, had once explored every inch of her skin.
“Are you going to stand there staring at me all night like I’m the Abominable Snowman come to call, or do you think you might condescend to let me inside?”
Did she have a choice? If she did, her vote would have been for locking him out on the porch rather than face a confrontation with him. But since she had a pretty good idea that a man like Peter Logan wouldn’t let anything as inconsequential as a locked door keep him away, she had no choice but to surrender to the inevitable. She stepped aside.
“What are you doing here, Peter?”
“You mean how did I figure out who the hell you really were?”
Despite her best efforts at control, she shivered at the menace in his tone. “That, too.”
“Don’t you read the papers, sweetheart?”
She stared at him blankly. Across the vast room, she was oddly aware of a log breaking apart in the fireplace with a hiss and crackle. After a moment he yanked a folded newspaper from the inside pocket of his snow-flecked leather jacket and slapped it down on the narrow hall table next to her.
She eyed it like he’d just let loose a wolverine in the Sweetwater great room. Warily, her pulse skipping with sudden trepidation, Katie picked up the newspaper. It was a copy of the society page of Portland Weekly, the independent tabloid that delighted in poking fun at the city’s movers and shakers.
Her gaze went to the photo first and her already queasy stomach dipped. It was a photo of her and the man now standing before her, both of them in elegant evening wear. Her back—bared in a glittery emerald-colored designer gown she’d borrowed from her best friend—was to the camera, but anybody who saw the picture could clearly identify Peter Logan—and could see the two of them were locked in a passionate embrace.
She had seen it before. The newspaper had run the photo months ago as part of a feature spread of a bachelor auction and charity benefit for Children’s Connection, a Portland adoption agency and fertility clinic. The caption had said only something about Peter being photographed in a hot kiss with a mystery woman. When they ran it the first time, she had seen it and thanked her very lucky stars that she hadn’t been recognizable.
Apparently someone had figured it out. The headline above this photo read “Mystery Solved: Crosby, Logan scions put aside famous feud long enough for kiss.”
Oh, no. She drew in a shaky breath. This was bad. Seriously bad. She read on.
“We first brought you the juicy tidbit a few months ago that Logan Corporation CEO and oh-so-sexy bachelor Peter Logan was caught in a very heated embrace with a mysterious glamour-gal during a chi-chi gala for Children’s Connection, a cause the Logan family notably supports. The two of them disappeared together soon after.
At the time. Logan pointedly refused to answer questions about the object of his affections, but after some digging, Portland Weekly has since learned his snuggle-honey was none other than Katherine Crosby. That’s right, of those Crosbys—Logan rivals on and off the corporate battlefield.
Does their embrace signal an end to the famous feud? Are Portland’s own versions of the Hatfield and McCoy clans really ready to kiss and make up?
Apparently at least two of them are.
Neither Logan nor Ms. Crosby were available for comment but we’ll bring you more about this exciting development as soon as we find out more.”
Her already queasy stomach dipped. Her mother was bound to hear about this; Katie had no doubt whatsoever about that. And when she did, Katie knew Sheila Crosby would rage and carry on for days, accusing her of everything from disloyalty to outright treason.
Just thinking about the inevitable scene made her shoulders sag with the exhaustion that never seemed far away these days.
“Nothing to say?” Peter finally asked when her silence dragged on.
“I’ve never been called a glamour-gal before. I don’t believe it’s as gratifying as I would have imagined.”
His sculpted features darkened. “I dislike being made a fool of, Katherine.”
“Kate,” she murmured, regretting the glibness she tended to turn to during times of high stress. “Nearly everyone calls me Katie or Kate.”
“Really, Celeste?” He asked in that same biting tone.
Oh, Katie. What a mess you’re in, she thought. Pregnant with this man’s baby, this overwhelming, powerful, gorgeous man who despised her and her family. If he hated her now, how would he react if he ever discovered the tiny secret she carried inside her?
The fragile threads of control seemed to slip a few more notches, but she flailed for them valiantly and faced him with what she hoped was cool aplomb.
Without waiting for the invitation she wasn’t sure she could issue, he yanked off his jacket and tossed it over the rack of entwined elk antlers in the hallway then claimed one of the plump armchairs near the fire. She really had no choice but to follow him and perched on the edge of the sofa, trying not to let him see her nervousness.
“Okay, let’s hear it. What’s your game?”
“Game?”
“What are you playing at? What were you trying to achieve by your little masquerade?”
Of course he would want explanations from her, some justification for her deception. How could she possibly find the words for something she didn’t even understand herself?
“Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”
“I don’t know that I have a good answer to that.”
“Try.” His voice was silk-sheathed steel.
She scrambled for some kind of explanation and finally came up with something she hoped sounded reasonable. It was part of the truth, just not all of it. “Katie Crosby is a fairly boring person,” she said after a long moment. “All she ever thinks about is work. I suppose it was exciting being someone else for a few hours. Someone glamorous and adventurous and…and desirable. I got carried away by the magic of the evening. Then, after we…kissed, I was afraid to tell you who I was. I knew you would be angry and it just seemed easier all around not to say anything.”
* * *
Peter studied her. She chewed her bottom lip after she finished speaking, waiting for him to respond. He wondered how in the hell a woman could appear so sweet and innocent on the outside while inside she was nothing but a deceptive little snake.
He had never been so furious. It was taking every ounce of willpower he possessed not to rage and yell and throw a table or two through that huge wall of windows.
His blood should have had time to cool in the twenty-four hours since his assistant had warily shown him that damn newspaper and he’d finally learned the identity of the mystery lover who had obsessed him for months. It had taken him most of that time to use all his connections and finally run her to ground here at this Wyoming ranch in the middle of nowhere, another hour to have his plane readied and two more in the air between here and Portland.
The whole time he’d been behind the controls of his Gulfstream III, he had waited for his anger to fade, for the familiar cool reserve the world expected of him to take over. But throughout the flight, as now, his skin had been hot and itchy as this fury seethed through him.
This woman—this slender, delicate-looking woman with her short hair and big eyes, who looked like a teenager in stocking feet and faded jeans—had made a complete fool out of him. Every word out of her lush little lips had been a lie.
When he thought about how he had obsessed over her in the three months since she blew through his life, the energy he had wasted looking for her, he could barely think past his rage and self-disgust.
A Crosby.
Just the name left a sour taste in his mouth. What an idiot he had been to throw away years of family loyalty, of complete dedication to the Logan name and everything it stood for, all for a pretty face.
All right, more than pretty, he admitted. Even now, when she wore no makeup to set off those sculpted cheekbones and full lips and when she had dark circles under her eyes and her features were pale, his body instinctively reacted to her.
He wanted her, even knowing who she was, and the discovery infuriated him even more.
“This is about the super router we’re developing, isn’t it?” he asked.
She was a hell of an actress, he’d give her that much. If he didn’t know better, he would almost believe that shock on her face was genuine. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“You went through my desk while I was asleep. Don’t try to deny it. Find out anything interesting about the project?”
Color flared high on those cheekbones. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Right. Now you’re going to tell me you don’t have any idea Logan is close to revolutionizing computer networking with our nano-peripheral-interface-router. And of course Crosby Systems, which coincidentally just released its own router-controller software, would have absolutely no interest in stealing the technology that would create the fastest networking system in the world. Come on, Crosby. You really think I’m dumb enough to fall for your lies twice?”
She gaped at him. “You think I was spying on you that night? That I was some kind of—of corporate Mata Hari, out for a little industrial espionage after I screw you into oblivion?”
“At this point, sweetheart, I wouldn’t put anything past you.”
“Because I’m a Crosby, right?”
That wounded belligerence in her voice grated down his spine like metal on metal. “Not only because you’re a Crosby. Because you’re also a lying, deceitful little—” He bit off the derogatory word just in time.
He was such an idiot. He hated to think about how his family would react to his abysmal lapse in judgment when they learned he’d been willing to risk the company’s entire future for a roll in the sack. He had a feeling he would be lucky if his name was still on the door of the CEO’s office at Logan. Hell, he’d be lucky if they even let him keep the name he’d been given as a six-year-old.
He never forgot how much he owed Terrence and Leslie Logan, how very blessed he had been to be adopted into their family two years after their own son had been kidnapped. If they hadn’t rescued him from the Children’s Connection orphanage, he hated thinking where he might have ended up. On the streets like his mother, probably, or in prison.
He owed them everything. His heart, his blood, his soul. When they read that damn tabloid article, he could just picture the disappointment in Terrence’s eyes, the hurt in Leslie’s. The knot in his stomach kinked a little tighter.
No. He had worked too hard for too long proving to his parents he was capable of running the Fortune 500 company they had built from the ground up. He refused to let a Crosby ruin everything, especially not this particular Crosby.
“Don’t you think you’re being a little paranoid, Peter?” she said now. “I never touched your desk.”
Against his will, he had a vivid memory of her naked and flushed the second or third time they made love, her luscious skin glowing with perspiration and the soft little noises of arousal she made as he took her against the nearest surface, which at the time just happened to be the top of his antique walnut desk.
Throughout that incredible night of passion, there had scarcely been a corner of his loft they’d missed in their hunger for each other.
He raised an eyebrow but said nothing. He knew the instant her own memory clicked in. A rosy blush spilled over her cheeks and she dropped her gaze.
“Well, besides that time,” she mumbled, looking so charmingly disconcerted he wondered how she could possibly be so deceitful.
“I’ve tried to think about what I might have had lying around about our NPIR project but I’m coming up empty. Why don’t you refresh my memory? What did you find?”
“Nothing! I wasn’t thinking about NPIRs or anything else computer related. I didn’t go anywhere near your stupid desk, except that time with…you.”
“Yet the note you left was written on my own personal stationery, which I just happen to keep in the top drawer of that stupid desk.”
She stared at him for a long moment, then she drew a deep breath. When she spoke, her voice sounded weary. “What do you want, Peter? Why follow me out here to the middle of nowhere? You could have yelled at me over the phone.”
He refused to let himself be sidetracked by how fragile she suddenly looked. “I want some answers. What did you learn about our project?”
“I didn’t learn anything! I told you that. I never even gave work a thought that night. If you’ll remember, you didn’t give me time to think about much of anything but you.”
They stared at each other for a moment and he remembered again the wild passion they had shared. Or at least he thought they’d shared it. Had it all been feigned on her part? All those long kisses, her sighs and moans, the way she acted as if she couldn’t seem to get enough of him?
That was the part that he was finding most difficult to accept, he finally admitted to himself. He had been enthralled with her, completely entranced. He had wanted her with a fierce hunger unlike anything he’d ever known before.
While she had been as cold-blooded and calculating as an asp.
“Did your brother tell you to sleep with me?” he asked.
With a swift intake of breath, she stared at him, her brown eyes huge in her pale face. In any other woman, he might have almost believed she looked hurt. But he obviously couldn’t trust anything his instincts told him about Katherine Crosby.
“That’s insulting to Trent and to me. I shouldn’t even justify it with a response but I will tell you that he knows nothing about this, about the two of us and that night. If he did, he would be livid.”
Peter slapped the folded tabloid at her. “Hate to be the one to break it to you, sweetheart, but there’s not a person in Portland who doesn’t know by now.”
She gazed at the paper for a moment, nibbling her lip again. “Okay so everyone might know we kissed. As for the rest of it, no one else has to know anything about that. We were both carried away by the champagne and the night and the whole thing. Matters never should have gone so far. We should both just forget it ever happened.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh, you have no idea,” she murmured.
At her words, another wave of anger washed over him. The intensity of it had him jumping to his feet and stalking to the fireplace. He hated that she could just dismiss the night they had spent together. Forget it ever happened. Right. As if he could just forget the most erotic night of his life.
He turned back to her. “A smart man never forgets his mistakes. And, sweetheart, this was one hell of a mistake.”
“For both of us.”
“The difference is, you knew exactly what you were doing—and who you were doing it with.”
“That’s right. I set out to seduce you from the moment I walked into that ballroom. It was a brilliant strategy, wouldn’t you say? All I had to do was convince you to take me home with you, make love all night until you fell asleep, then comb through your office on the chance—slim to none though it was—that I might find some tiny snippet of information in your loft about your super-router that we could use at Crosby Systems. Right. You caught me. That’s me, Katie Crosby, corporate spy. Trent sends his little sister out to sleep with all his business rivals.”
“I wouldn’t put anything past the Crosbys.”
Something flashed in her dark eyes, something that looked like anger and hurt and maybe even a little sorrow. “Okay, that’s enough,” she snapped. “I would like you to leave now. I’m sure you don’t want to spend another moment in the belly of the beast.”
She rose as if to show him out but as soon as she stood, what little color remaining on her face drained out like wine spilling from a tipped glass and she swayed. Peter reached out instinctively to keep her from toppling over, then helped her back onto the couch.
“What’s wrong? Are you ill?”
Her chin lifted. “What do you care?”
“I don’t,” he snapped. “Maybe I just happen to be fond of these particular boots and don’t want you yakking all over them.”
She glared at him. “Your precious boots are safe. I’m not going to yak, as you so charmingly put it. I stood up a little too soon but I’m perfectly fine now.”
He only had to take one look at her to know she was lying, but then why should that surprise him? The woman wouldn’t know the truth if it jumped up and bit her in the behind. With hollow eyes, her skin three shades past white and her mouth pinched like a shriveled apple left in the bottom of the bushel, she sat there and expected him to believe everything was fine.
“I didn’t see signs of anybody else when I arrived. Who else is out here with you?”
She paused as if she didn’t want to answer him, then she finally shrugged. “Usually the ranch foreman and his wife live in quarters at the rear of the house, but they’re away for a few days.”
“You’re alone?”
“Not if you count two dogs, six barn cats, a dozen horses and two hundred head of cattle.”
He studied her pale features again, suddenly chagrined at himself for bursting in on her, guns blazing. She might be a lying Crosby but she didn’t look well at all.
Crosby or not, he didn’t like the idea of her being out here alone. A thousand things could happen to an ill woman on her own at an isolated Wyoming ranch, especially with the storm percolating out there.
“If you’re done yelling at me, I really would like you to leave now.” Somehow she managed to inject regal condescension into her words, even with her pale features.
“I really think I should stay,” he found himself saying.
Her eyes widened and he didn’t miss the way her hand clenched over her stomach, as if just the idea of spending another moment with him was enough to make her insides churn.
“No. No, you shouldn’t. The weather report said a nasty storm is heading this way. You’ll want to fly back to Portland before it hits.”
“It’s already here. Can’t you hear that wind? The reports I heard before I landed said this area was due for at least two feet of snow. I won’t be flying anywhere tonight.”
“If you heard the storm reports before you left, why fly out here in such a rush? Acting on a whim like that hardly seems like typical behavior for the cold, ruthless CEO of Logan Corporation.”
Nothing he had done since he’d seen her in that hotel ballroom had been typical behavior for him. He had seen the reports of an approaching storm in this area before he left Portland, but not even flying into the eye of a hurricane would have kept him grounded.
He had known he was foolish to leave but he had been so angry he hadn’t cared about anything but running her to ground, after three long months of searching.
“It doesn’t matter why I left,” he answered. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’m not in the mood for your macho posturing, Peter. I don’t want or need you here.”
“Fickle little thing, aren’t you? Three months ago, you certainly wanted me around. If my memory serves—and believe me, it does—you couldn’t get enough.”
She glared at him, though he saw yet another blush heat those cheeks. “Which am I? Ruthless corporate spy or sex-crazed nymphomaniac?”
“Good question. One I would certainly like to know the answer to myself.”
Before she could give voice to the heated response he could see brewing, a powerful gust of wind rattled the windowpanes and moaned under the eaves of the log ranch house.
The two lamps burning in the room flickered in unison then went out, pitching the room into darkness lit only by the fire’s glow.
